Beautiful Day For A Horseback Ride!

Blue sky, sun, high of 60 degrees F, about 44% humidity. And the silence and serenity of the woods. This is my horse looking at some other horses before we left the place where I stall and went into the woods:

Today I rode bareback (and bitless, as you can tell from the above picture):

It’s been a long time since I rode bareback. Glad I did. It was fun, and I needed it as a measure and reminder of balanced riding. I really needed the practice: I lost my seat a few times! Ugh! (Which is not to say I fell, but to say I didn’t stay glued to a specific part of the horse.) It’s good to feel the horse work, too — something you can’t feel with a saddle between you and horse. I could feel the muscles engage as my horse changed paces and could feel the muscles pull and work as he’d run. We trotted some (but slowed down to go under the crown of a fallen tree), walked down and through a ravine (but trotted up and out), and cantered along some trails (but not enough). The videos require Quick Time. They were taken with my cell phone; you can tell by the quality of the images: sometimes you can see little squares of color.